What Is Your Name?

Chapter 2: My Mother's Name (Lillian)

I don't remember all that I've been through, but it feels like I do. Sky has told me so many times I can see it, plain as day.

I'm the only one Sky tells this stuff to. He told me when he learned my father had become an evil sorcerer. He told me about his parents, and my father, and my brother, and my mother, too. He told me he had promised her to show me the world. He hasn't kept that promise yet, but I know he will. The only thing Sky has never told me, though it's been the one thing I've always wanted to know, is my mother's name. I've seen pictures of her. I know everything about her. I know we share a birthday, and that she loved strawberries almost as much as I do, and she never stole a thing in her life. But I don't know her name. Sky promised he'd tell me someday, though. Someday I'll know her name.

The best thing in my life right now is when I can get Sky to sing. Sky loves to sing, while strumming my father's old guitar, which he hates, I love, and we both need. Every year on our birthday, Sky sings his own original song just for me. He always starts writing it weeks in advance, while I'm at the grocery store stealing food or pickpocketing at the mall. Other than that, he mostly just sings songs he hears on the radio, and I always sing along.

I don't remember my foster parents all that well, and I don't remember my grandparents at all, but I've always had Sky. It never mattered to me that we were stealing, or loitering, or trespassing, because I knew Sky and I had to survive. I knew Sky would've given his last stolen penny to save me from starvation, and I knew I'd always do the same for him. I have no idea what kind of relationship my mother and my uncle had, but I believe Sky was the same to me as my mother was to him. He was there, which is more than I can say for literally anyone else. When I was alone, it was Sky who sang to me. When I said I craved pizza, it was Sky who spent all the money he had stolen that day to buy us some. When I cried for a past, for a mother, it was Sky who gave me the necklace he said my mother always wore. It's always just been us. Until I turned thirteen, and Sky turned seventeen.

"We've never accepted a student this young before," the fat man said.

"We know more about Eli... I mean, Elliot... than any students you've ever had, and you are skeptical about accepting us because Lillian is slightly younger than me?" I had never seen Sky more annoyed than when he was trying to get us into this boarding school... for free. That would change soon enough.

Lord Grantham's School for the Fighting Arts was one of the most prestigious schools in the country. It was founded when I was around seven years old for one purpose: to defeat my father. I don't know what he's been through, but nothing justifies an evil sorcerer mass-murderer. And that would be my dad.

"Well, we'll have to find a girl who's willing to have a roommate. Elliot has attacked the school before. It's not safe for a child," Lord Grantham, the same fat man, continued.

"No."

"I beg your pardon?"

"What I said was no," Sky repeated. "Lillian needs me almost as much as I need her. We're family, and if you expect us to be apart you're crazy."

"And I'm not a child," I added, mumbling.

"Not helping, Lillian!" Sky turned his scowling face to me. I stared right back, and he calmed down a little and returned his attention to Grantham. "Lillian and I are sharing a room, Lillian is coming to this school in the first place, and I will do almost anything to bring Eli to his knees."

Grantham raised his eyebrows. "Almost?"

Sky looked right back at him, glaring in the face of danger, of trouble, of death. Sky could always stare anything down for my sake. "'Anything' is what I'd do for her."

When Sky said that, he pointed. I could never tell if he was pointing at my necklace or at me.